HEATHER by Dancing Brick Explores Relationship with Favorite Authors at EdFringe Next Week

What matters more, the storyteller or the story?

Edinburgh audiences can see Heather, the new show by Dancing Brick from next Wednesday at Summerhall.

Written by Thomas Eccleshare and directed by Valentina Ceschi the show focuses on a reclusive children's writer who becomes wildly successful. Her books are treasured across the country. But when a troubling narrative starts to unfold, we find ourselves asking: what matters more, the storyteller or the story? Brilliantly imaginative and theatrically original, Heather is a short, sharp play about language, prejudice and the power of stories.

In three acts, the play explores two characters' relationships to the books and to each other, forcing them to question their own responsibility and motivation. Each act takes the performers into a different mode of communication, forcing the audience to engage with the different ways in which the text is being manipulated, mediated and interpreted.

With current media interest in the way publishers manipulate novelist's identities and image, the show has a special topicality and relevance. 'In a world of fake news, now seems like the perfect time to question, challenge and interrogate the idea of authorship, objectivity and whether a text can exist in isolation' said Eccleshare 'and Harry Potter or His Dark Materials fans will definitely find something to interest them here too!'.

Thomas Eccleshare is a writer, performer, and theatre maker who trained at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. As a playwright, Thomas has won the Verity Bargate Award, the Catherine Johnson Award and been nominated for an Off West End Award for Most Promising Writer He is the co-artistic Director of Dancing Brick with whom he has toured work nationally and internationally, been nominated for two Total Theatre Awards and won the Arches Brick Award.

Valentina Ceschi has extensive experience in theatre and opera. She is co-director at Dancing Brick with whom she has toured nationally and internationally since 2008 (her latest production of the Snow Child, commissioned by the Unicorn Theatre, will transfer to the Lincoln Centre in New York later this year). She is associate director for OperaUpClose for whom she is directing The Magic Flute in a new version by Glyn Maxwell at Soho Theatre, opening in September.

http://dancingbrick.net/

Heather runs from 3-27 August (except 14) at Summerhall, Cairns Lecture Theatre 1 Summerhall Edinburgh EH9 1PL

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/heather